Of Strategy and Quality

Naturally, I am to ask a lot of questions as an Editor. The following two questions, while only applicable in very specific situations, are among my favourites. You will see why.

1    1) What is your strategy?

2    2) f I asked YOUR customers, what would they tell me why they buy from you?

Recently, someone answered (unedited responses):

1    1) Growth and profitability

      2) Quality

If I was a consultant for a company answering as above, I would have some work to do. Here is my take, as also discussed in my submission on strategy for my Msc in Project Management.

STRATEGY

Strategic vision is of utmost importance; it communicates directions (Amason, 2011, 46-53), defining core competencies (Collins and Porras, 2018). Sometimes visons fail to do so, as e.g. Google’s previous secrecy about its strategy (Rahman, n.d., 4) may make us blind men touching elephants (Schmaltz and Schmaltz, 2003). Strategy must be clearly communicated internally, so that everyone is aligned and pulls in the same direction.

As a company, one may chose different strategies: emergent strategy, contrary to designed approach (Ansoff, 1991). One may make decisions that are not based on a clear strategy and initially be lucky, however, one should seek to be deliberate (Fiore et al., 2019). Operating in VUCA environments (Stachowicz-Stanusch, 2019), we can see some companies using the notion of Napoleonic warfare: subsidiaries keep moving rather than compete (Kornberger and Engberg-Pedersen, 2021). Addressing trade-offs (Porter, 1996, 61–78), breaking the business into entrepreneurial units filled with experts (Johnson et al., 2017) allows agile implementation to fit emergent strategies (Anderson, 2013, 104-136), thus exploiting opportunities. Disadvantages include increased resource allocation for non-core activities (Nurton, 2013), risk of wrong decisions (Gilbert-Saad et al., 2021) and hiring of misfit staff (Wright and Snell, 1998).

Cost leadership, differentiation and focus are generally accepted strategies. Using these, communications, innovation strategy, hiring, procurement decisions etc can be derived.

When getting the above, the strategy right, Growth and Profitability will be the RESULT of it, not the strategy. I would posit that there isn’t a for-profit company that does not aim for growth and profitability. That however, is the goal, not the method to archiving success. Once quantified and qualified, growth and profitability could become part of KPIs or the companies’ vision, but what it is not is strategy.

QUALITY

“Quality”. EVERY product or service has quality. Some have qualities: non-slippery and easy to hold. Quality is defined as the grade of excellence. Hence, if you offer a product that will last half the time of that of your competition, you have delivered quality. Unless clearly defined, just “Quality” says nothing.

What “Quality” means to one person is and will be subjectively different to the next unless there are industry standards that can indicate the quality of the product to some extend. Think RON 95, non-virgin olive oil. If I was asked to say why I work with certain suppliers, I would answer that pro-active problem notification is one of the approaches is one that I value in the relationship. I am sure that everyone will have something that they value a supplier for. However, I wonder how many would simply say that it is the quality.